Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Women are more caring in sickness than men

One time I accompanied a lady friend to visit her relative who was sick, I thought it was just normal sickness and it was just to check on how she was doing. To my shock we found the lady was seriously sick, in bed and could not walk or talk comfortably. This really shocked us because she looked like she was in a bad state and needed to be hospitalized. We found out that the husband preferred home based treatment than taking her to hospital, so a doctor was coming to check on her in the house. It seems she needed more than this because she looked dehydrated and needed better treatment. She struggled to whisper that she has been begging the husband to take her to hospital but the husband ignored her pleas.

After a lot of intervention from my friend who works in a hospital the husband finally allowed her to be taken to hospital, were they realized she didn’t even have enough blood. To cut the story short this lady had not been taken to the hospital earlier, she would have died in the house due to the husband’s attitude and not getting the right treatment.

This is not the first case I have encountered where men keep or treat their sick wives in the house instead of taking them to hospital. This is very common with people who are HIV positive. Normally the man seems to know what the problem is and does not want the wife to get to hospital where she may get to know what is ailing her. Many women have died in the house due to such practice by their husbands or die in hospital when taken there when it is too late. The lucky ones survive due to intervention from relatives, neighbors and friends.

In times of sickness women act differently, most women would rush their sick husbands to hospital to get treatment and promptly visit them in hospital, feeding them, helping them in many ways until they get well. However the case is different when it is the wife who is sick, many men ignore their sick wives, they would rather use female relatives or friends to deal with the wife, take care of her at home, take her to hospital and most of the time they would not visit the wife promptly in hospital. One can notice this in hospitals, when you visit male wards you will find mostly women visitors and at the same time when you visit female wards you will also find most of the visitors are women.

This is one attitude in majority men I have noticed, we were discussing this issue with my lady friends who also agreed, so we wonder do men who behave like this want their wives to die, to pave way for them to marry again or to be free. In many African traditions people believe that if a person dies annoyed they can come back and haunt those who annoyed them, as a Christian I normally do not want to believe such things happen. However such men should be haunted by the wives they mistreat to death.